Week 16

This is week 16, almost 4 months have gone by since Jacob left on his mission. Each letter brings us more and more joy as he is so excited to be doing what he is doing. We wait with anticipation for each email. This will be a sad week but also and exciting one as we will get to talk to Jacob on the phone but will celebrate our first Christmas with him being away from us. We are really looking forward to hearing from him and being able to talk with him. Jacob has had an exciting week as you will read and see in his latest email.
"This week was definitely special. Let me tell you a short story: a few weeks ago, we taught a woman named Carmen the first lesson, we found her by knocking doors. The lesson went well, although she was a Testigo de Jehova (Jehova´s Witness) for a number of years. We tried to go back to visit her twice, but she wasn´t ever there, we assumed she wasn´t interested. About a week and a half later, we forgot about her completely. That is until one day, we were walking on her street by her house and I asked, ´`what happened with that lady?´´ We decided to check if she was home. Surprisingly, she greeted us with a warm welcome. The lesson that insued was deeply spiritual and gave her much needed hope. We invited her to come to church. She agreed, and to our surprise, she had a non-member friend accompany her. After the services, we taught Carmen´s friend, who´s named Daeli, and gave her a Book of Mormon. The next day when we went to check up on her, we were again surprised to find out that Daeli had read 11 chapters of The Book of Mormon, and had already grown a testimony. We set baptismal dates for Carmen and Daeli and continued teaching them. They were golden investigators as we say. The day before Carmen´s baptismal interview, she had a doubt about her job (she gets paid to help people through therapy, although she doesn´t have a licence). We told her we would find out if it was anything to worry about and return the next day. Turns out her doubt was nothing wrong, but she still felt guilty. We offered her a blessing of comfort, the Spirit in the room was the strongest I´ve ever felt in my life. Carmen must have felt it too, because she was baptized (with Daeli) on Saturday and confirmed yesterday! So that´s my experience and confirmation as to why I´m in this area! Anyway, we have two Christmas church fiestas this week and a possibly bautizona on Christmas day. I got my package yesterday, and I'll admit... I opened it early. I can´t even thank you all for your sacrifices on my behalf. The Christmas stocking is absolutely classic and I definitely needed the ties. Well don't worry about me calling home, I'll just call sometime during Christmas day, so be close to the phone! Our transfer date was this past Tuesday, so it will be six weeks before I find out where I'm going. My companion (Elder Amador) is going to end his mission before that date, so we'll see what happens. We're working hard so that he can surpass 120 baptisms which means 17 more for him. Well I love you all. I know the Church of Jesus Christ is His kingdom on earth and I know you know too. Talk to you soon!

Merry Christmas!

-Elder Butterfield